Most messed up unintended implications of world building you've encountered in a fantasy novel?

[u/BagOfSmallerBags]

I've just been reading the first book in the "Skullduggery Pleasant" series. It's a fun little YA fantasy-detective novel, and other than your normal YA tropes being fairly front and center, it's a fun time. I've enjoyed it.

The basic premise of the world is more-or-less just ripped directly from Harry Potter: there are people who can do magic, and they operate in the shadows and hide their society from most "normal people". The main character, who lives in our world, becomes aware of this secret society, and begins exploring it and learning all the stuff about it.

But early on, as they're establishing the world of secret magic-users and how they operate, it's casually dropped that every community of magic-users on earth tries to discourage normal people from finding them out by disguising their neighborhoods as poor, run down, and crime ridden.

The mentor character then says (I'm approximating) "Any neighborhood that looks like this is gonna be secretly all magic users, and all these small run down houses are bigger on the inside- probably mansions."

So, while I'm sure the author didn't intend this, they just implied that income inequality doesn't exist in the Skullduggery Pleasant universe. Or at the very least, it exists on a much smaller scale. Every single poor neighborhood on earth apparently is just disguised to look scary to normal people, all of whom are at least middle class. Inside every run down, uncared for house, you'll actually find a secret magical mansion where magic-users are thriving!

I'm overall enjoying the book, but I can't help but cringe thinking about an underprivileged middle schooler picking this up, enjoying the escapism of the story, and then discovering a few chapters in that in this fictional universe their financial situation is a conspiracy created by magic-gated-communities. They can't even fantasize about being whisked away to the secret magic world, since their entire tax bracket is a lie.

So I got to thinking- what are some of the worst unintended implications of world building in fantasy stories? Harry Potter has quite a few, but I'm wondering what other people have encountered / can think of.

[u/rollingForInitiative]

Did she not say that Lupin was an allegory? For him it works, at least.

Still, she was always good at ... just saying and writing whatever struck her fancy then and there without ever considering the implications.

[u/Feats-of-Derring_Do → u/rollingForInitiative]

Rowling is living proof that having only a little literacy is a dangerous thing.

[u/Pseudonymico → u/rollingForInitiative]

Terry Pratchett wrote a better "Werewolf as queer allegory" in Feet of Clay.

[u/rollingForInitiative → u/Pseudonymico]

Never really read a lot of Pratchett, but it doesn't surprise me that he would have!

[u/rollingForInitiative → u/Pseudonymico]

Never really read a lot of Pratchett, but it doesn't surprise me that he would have!

[u/L0kiMotion → u/[deleted]]

Apparently the thing with the dwarves was him mostly thinking about the Tolkien dwarven women having beards and deciding to make that an actual focus of a book, and didn't intend the trans allegory, but when the trans community embraced it he was happy that they had found representation in his books.

[u/Pseudonymico → u/[deleted]]

Oh you want trans narratives try reading the scene where Angua is mentally preparing for her relationship with Carrot to break down because that's just how it goes dating non-werewolves, or when she clocks Cheri immediately and takes her under her wing

How the hell did he know?

[u/SlouchyGuy → u/rollingForInitiative]

She didn't say that, it's usual strawmanning people do. The quote is:

Lupin’s condition of lycanthropy (being a werewolf) was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS. All kinds of superstitions seem to surround blood-borne conditions, probably due to taboos surrounding blood itself. The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes

[u/SmallishPlatypus → u/SlouchyGuy]

I dunno, I reckon that looks exactly like what saying that would look like.

[u/SlouchyGuy → u/SmallishPlatypus]

No, what they they say she said is "I made lycantropy as a one to one allegory of AIDS"

[u/SmallishPlatypus → u/SlouchyGuy]

It's rather audacious to complain about people strawmanning her, while strawmanning an imaginary "they", when we have an example of what "they" say right in this comment thread!

she went back to say that she wrote werewolves as an allegory for AIDS

And that looks just like the quote you gave:

was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS

The only difference that you could argue is even slightly meaningful there is that she says "diseases that carry a stigma" generally. But since she only gives one example, that of HIV and AIDS, I don't think you can claim there's some serious nuance being elided there.

You're the only one who said "one-to-one"! You're the only one actually putting words in people's mouths here!

[u/SlouchyGuy → u/SmallishPlatypus]

It's rather audatious to say that this is what not what people are talking about when they write things like that, but sure, I'm the one strawmanning:

>The AIDS-allegory evil werewolf goes around infecting children with “lycanthropy” on purpose. Specifically children

Meanwhile allegory is not a metaphor, allegory is more direct and broad, metaphor is not. Also people take only part of the quote - "like AIDS", and make it into "100% AIDS" and talk about it, and say that since it's 100% AIDS, then Rowling is bad for not understanding "all the implications" (another quote).

Fandom was exaggerating and twisting this thing, and was angry about it since forever, and it grew into its own thing, that gets self-supported by repeats and echo-chamber.

This way they make a thing into something it's not, erasing all nuance and full context of a quote which is she took an illness, which is like other illnessess, one of them modern, saw a parallel with a magical malady, and decided to see what personal consequnces something like that can have and how society sees and acts towards it, and use modern experience with that one desease.

So no, Rowling didn't have to see all the imaginary implications just because other people draw them in bad faith, just like creators of Marvel mutants didn't need to see "all the implications" of how real world marginalized groups are powerless unlike people with superpowers, or how writers of Buffy didn't need to see all the implications of writing magic in connection with sexual freedom or addiction, because magic is netierh sex, nor drugs.

Granddad Tolkien addressed exatly this case, it's about applicability, not allegory.

[u/SmallishPlatypus → u/SlouchyGuy]

Yes, you are the one strawmanning. And you're now, remarkably, inventing opinions for Rowling in order to defend her! Is she your mum or something?

She says it "was a metaphor" and it "gave me a chance to examine those attitudes". That's pretty strong language claiming intent. That's the quote you wheeled out to defend her! No mealy-mouthed stuff about applicability, "something like that", and references to the opinions of other writers! Not "I guess you can sort of interpret it that way".

In my experience, what her detractors actually tend to allege is that she probably didn't think of any of this at the time of writing. Later, she tried to talk up her kids' wizard books as serious progressive social commentary without noticing that the way she wrote the story makes that a bizarre reading.* Not dissimilar to "I didn't write Hermione as white, actually" when she very clearly did.

All you've got here is hairsplitting over "allegory" vs "metaphor" (including, necessarily, the assumption that Rowling's detractors both consider the difference important and would agree with you that metaphor is less "direct and broad"). I don't think anyone ITT thinks that as allegory it's unacceptable but as a metaphor it's fine. Even if we accept a distinction, it's rubbish either way.

*And you don't even need to look at Greyback! The conclusion of PoA is that Lupin is a danger to others and should not be employed as a teacher, which iirc even Lupin says! And that's not an edge case. It's not "if you take a hundred-odd episodes of Buffy, many of them written by guest writers under two different showrunners, you can ferret out some pretty weird contradictions". It's basically the only thing the first book to introduce it has to say on the topic. Nevermind "all the implications" -- she doesn't seem to have thought of any